Borrowed from the Dresden Tourism page (it was translated from German by google, so I can't verify all of the grammar etc):
At the left Elbufer, convenient in the vertex of a graceful river elbow, is the historical center of Dresden. For many centuries by powerful fortress walls protected, unfolded the Saxonian residence here splendour and activity.
This very day the buildings from Renaissance, baroque and 19 determine. Century the looking side of our city, the Elbfront. By the jenseitigen bank or regarded by one the Elbbrücken out, shows up Dresden already at first sight as culture city of European rank.
Despite heavy destruction in the Second World War the Dresdens old part of town retained delightful ensembles or recovered. The reconstruction of the city centre finds its most well-known symbol in the Dresdens woman church, to that splendourful baroque domed structure, which - outside completed - coins/shapes now again the Dresdens city silhouette.
Many important cultural facilities are to be found along the Altstädter Elbufers: Of the picture gallery old person master up to the vault of the Saxonian cure princes and kings, becoming green Gewölbe.
The old part of town is equally center of the city life: In the Saxonian federal state parliament the fate of Saxonia is determined, in the city hall those the city. Around old market and Prager are road shopping centres and catering trade, culture and work.
The Postplatz is the center of Dresden. At this point, it’s still pretty empty, but it has seen a lot of construction and renovation in recent years. In some areas, you can still see the remains of buildings from 1945.
At one end of the Postplatz, there is a building that looks somewhat like a mosque. Its name is “Yenidze,” which means “the new field,” in Turkish. It’s actually a cigarette factory, which is over one hundred years old. Since tobacco came from Turkey at that point, the architect got a bit creative and designed the building similar to what it looks like today. I say similar because all of Dresden was decimated during the bombings of February 13-14, 1945.
That which marks the western edge of the city center so impressively, is no mosque, but a 1908/09 in the pseudooriental maurischen architectural style more delighted and industrial building bekrönter with a artful arranged, colored glass dome. Here the cigarette company” Yenidze “a camp and a production building with enormous werblicher radiant emittance created itself.
Late than Tabakkontor the used monumental building accommodates today after detail-faithful reconstruction office space and a restaurant. Under the glass dome fairy tale readings in fantastically eastern atmosphere take place.
Dresden’s most famous monarch was August the Strong, also know as Augustus der Starker. He was the king of both Poland and Saxony, and because of this unique situation, he shaped much of what Dresden became.
Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony (Augustus II the Strong) (German: August II der Starke; Polish: August II Mocny) (12 May 1670 – 1 February 1733) was as Frederick Augustus I the Elector of Saxony 1694-1733, and later also King of Poland 1697-1704 and again 1709-1733.
August's great physical strength earned him the nicknames "the Strong“, "Saxon Hercules“ and "iron hand“. He liked to show that he lived up to his name by breaking horse shoes with his bare hands. His ancestor Cymburgis of Masovia was also noted for her strength.
August the Strong owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
As Elector of Saxony, he is perhaps best remembered as a patron of the arts and architecture. He established the Saxon capital of Dresden as a major cultural center, attracting artists from across Europe to his court. August also amassed an impressive art collection and built fantastic baroque palaces at Dresden and at Warsaw.
As a politician, he is nowadays not held in high esteem in Poland, getting blamed for embroiling the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Great Northern War. His attempts at internal reforms and at bolstering the royal power are considered coming to naught, while his policies are said to have allowed the Russian Empire to strengthen its influence over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Augustus was born in Dresden, Saxony, as the son of John George III and Princess Anne Sophie of Denmark. In 1694, upon the death of his elder brother John George IV, Augustus became Elector of Saxony, as Frederick Augustus I.
In order to be eligible for the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Augustus had to convert to Roman-Catholicism. Given that the Saxon dukes traditionally had been called "champions of the Reformation" and that the duchy was a stronghold of German Protestantism, Augustus's conversion was most spectacular. Subsequently the now Roman-Catholic electors of Saxony lost the prestigious leading role of the Protestant estates in the Imperial Diet (see Reichstag) to Brandenburg-Prussia. Although the prince-elector guaranteed Saxony's religious status quo he somewhat alienated his Protestant subjects with his embracing the Papacy, and because of the huge amount of money necessary to bribe Polish noblemen and clergy at the expense of the Saxon treasury, Augustus's royal ambitions were referred to as his "Polish adventure" by some contemporaries.
It is, however, noteworthy that the directorate of the Corpus Evangelicorum, which was the official Imperial board of the Protestant estates and the counterpart of the Corpus Catholicorum, remained with Saxony and thus, paradoxically, with the Roman-Catholic Augustus as its head. His church policy within the Holy Roman Empire was orthodoxly Lutheran on behalf of his Saxon subjects (and apparently against his newly found religious and also absolutistic convictions), whereas the Protestant Princes of the Empire and the two remaining Protestant Electors (of Hanover and Prussia) were anxious to keep Saxony well-integrated in their camp. According to the Peace of Augsburg Augustus theoretically had the right to re-introduce Roman-Catholicism (see Cuius regio, eius religio) or at least give religious freedom to his fellow Catholics to the full extent, but it never happened. Saxony remained Lutheran altogether and the few Roman-Catholics were without any political or civil rights, and in 1717 it became clear how awkward the issue was: For his ambitious family-plans in Poland and Germany it was necessary that his heirs became Roman-Catholics, too. So, after five years as a convert in disguise, his son--the future Augustus III--publicly came out as a Roman-Catholic. The Saxon estates were outraged and revolting, because now it was certain that Roman-Catholicism wasn’t just an episode in Saxony of Augustus II.
Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, electress consort of Augustus, interestingly refused to follow her husband's example and remained a staunch Protestant. She didn't attend her husband's coronation in Poland and led a rather quiet life outside of Dresden. She gained some popularity for her stubbornness.
Augustus II was called "the Strong" for his bear-like physical strength and for his numerous offspring. He is alleged by some to have sired either 365 or 382 children. The number is extremely difficult to verify; August officially recognized only a tiny fraction of that number as his bastards (the mothers of these "chosen ones," with the possible exception of Fatima, were all aristocratic ladies) and he had only one legitimate child. The most famous of the king’s bastards is Maurice de Saxe who was a brilliant strategist and reached the highest military ranks in Ancien Régime France. In the War of the Polish Succession he remained loyal to his employer Louis XV of France, who was married to the daughter of Augustus’s rival Stanisław Leszczyński and hence an opponent of Augustus III. In recognition of his service, Maurice de Saxe was eventually made one of only six maréchaux généraux in French history. He was the great-grandfather of French novelist George Sand, the longtime companion of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.
Augustus II successfully set out to discover the secret of "white gold," as the porcelain that he produced at Dresden and Meissen was described. In 1701 he rescued the young alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger, who was fleeing from Fredrick the First's expectation that he produce gold as he had boasted he could. King Augustus II imprisoned Böttger and forced him to reveal the secret of manufacturing gold. Böttger's transition from alchemist to potter was orchestrated as an attempt to avoid the impossible demands of the king. Being an alchemist by profession rather than a potter gave Böttger an advantage in the quest for the secret of porcelain. He realized that the current approaches which involved mixing fine white substances like crushed egg shells into clay was not the answer, but rather his approach was to attempt to bake the clay at higher temperatures than ever before created in a kiln in Europe. He intended to melt the structure of the clay so as to transmute it into a new substance. That approach yielded the breakthrough which had eluded European potters for a century. Today the manufacture of fine porcelain continues at the Meissen porcelain Factory. Augustus II also gathered together in Dresden many of the best architects and painters from all over Europe, and his reign marked the beginning of Dresden's development as a leading center of technology and art.
After going through Dresden and seeing the sights by storm, we drove through some of the residential districts. Most of the houses have been beautifully restored. I think a lot of this was a result of privatization and reprivatization. Once the Soviets left Dresden, the government went through old documents to determine the rightful owners, or the rightful descendents of the owners, of the buildings. This took years to do.
Our first stop where we got out of the bus was at the Endless Fields. This is a large open field on the banks of the Elbe River. People were walking dogs or running here. Our guide pointed out three castle-like structures on the hill overlooking the river. The first belonged to Prince Albrecht, the second to his servant, and the third to the man who invented mouthwash. After a time, the house in the middle was sold to the man who invented toothpaste. All they needed was the guy who invented floss to move up there and it would have been like Oral Hygiene Mountain. Today, one of them is in ruins, one is owned by the Dresden government, and the third is a concert hall. This area was really very pretty, and I think had the weather been a bit nicer (it was kind of cold and damp – the kind of cold that goes right through you), it would have been a lot of fun to stay there for a while. As it was, we got out and took some pictures and heard some lecture on the area, and piled back into the bus where it was relatively warm.
The next interesting bit of our tour was the Blue Wonder Bridge. It was constructed in roughly the same time period as the Eiffel Tower, and uses some of the same technology and materials. However, it was painted to prevent rusting, and now the paint has turned to blue, green, turquoise, or grey depending on the weather. I don’t mean that on a rainy day it’s green and on a sunny day it’s blue, but overall, it’s just very colorful.
As technical wonderwork were considered at that time also the 1891 to 1893 established steel framework construction of the suspension bridge between Loschwitz and blister joke, which owe the name” blue miracle “to its light blue painting.
On our way to Pillnitz, Gerald told us stories of what it was like to grow up in East Germany. Once we got there, we took a little hike. Pillnitz is like a large garden, and there is a summer castle on the river. We started out near the road, and the landscaping was like an English Garden, but further in, closer to the river, the landscaping becomes a French Garden.
Pillnitz was the former summer residence of the Saxonian yard. Embedded into a geometrical garden plant the water and mountain palaces with their curved roofs, high chimneys group themselves and” chinoisen front painting “.
The plant came out 1720/22 from the palace at the water side. 1818/26 were built opposite at the mountain side the new palace. Today the lock Pillnitz accommodates among other things the museum of arts and crafts.
Special attention earns the English landscape garden. Beside many rare trees over 200 years the old Japanese Kamelie is a special attraction.
At the sunny Pillnitzer slopes the grapes/clusters for the delicious, dry Elbtalwein mature. Here you also the small established by M.D. Pöppelmann find vineyard-church-recommended are also an attendance in the Carl Maria of weber museum Hosterwitz and in the Richard Wagner museum Graupa. Both composers selected themselves the idyllische Elblandschaft nearby the Pillnitzer of lock to the summer stay.
In the English Garden part, there lives a Camellia tree. It’s technically a bush because it has more than one trunk, but its certainly big enough to be a tree. It was smuggled over to Europe in the late 1700’s by the English who wanted to have some tea trees. There were four at the time. The English sent one to Vienna, one to Hanover, and one to Dresden. The only one still alive today is the Camilla in Dresden. Each year, around February or March, the tree blossoms with thousands of red flowers. Last year was a low year, and it only had fifteen thousand. This year they are expecting more than thirty thousand. However, we couldn’t go right up to the tree because it was in a greenhouse construct. Back in the day, it was covered by straw and then by a wooden hut to protect it from the cold European winters. Recently, the glass greenhouse was built, and each winter it is moved into place over the tree. In May, it is moved back several feet so that the tree can be in nature. Although this is an improvement from the hut, it still means that the public cannot really get in to see the Camilla tree. Every day, though, the tree has visiting hours in the winter. I find this a bit silly, but I guess if you’re really into your botany stuff, this means you’ll wait in line to walk into the greenhouse and be the first to climb the stairs on the inside to get up near the top of the tree. Since I’m not that dedicated and we didn’t have that kind of time, I took some pictures of the flowers from behind the glass.
As we walked through the gardens, Gerald pointed out other botanical interests. In the French part of the garden there is a large boat that somewhat resembles a gondola that you would see in Venice. However, this can’t be the case because the River Elbe has a current, and a gondola wouldn’t be used in that sort of condition. But if you look a little bit closer, you can see that it was set up for eight strong men to row the boat. This is Prince Augustus’ personal boat, which he used for part of the trip from the Dresden Castle Residence to his summer residence in Pillnitz. Because it was a relatively long journey and would have been physically impossible for those men to row that far with the kind of current the Elbe has, the other two parts were done by means of a carriage, and the boat was only used in the middle part.
At this point I got distracted by a couple of squirrels playing in the trees. Did you know that European squirrels have different ears from American squirrels? They also seem to come in more colors, since the two I saw were black and red. I just thought it was interesting, and that you might need a short break from all the architecture/history stuff going on.
As we looked to our left, the Palace at Pillnitz was spread out before us. It was very pretty, but unlike anything we had see thus far in Europe. The nickname for this palace is Little China or Little Japan. It’s done in a very stereotypical Eastern fashion. The palace has curved roofs with many little decorative chimneys and there is a lot of color that you don’t see in other palaces. On the outside, especially along the top, under the overhang from the roof, are painted Asian scenes. This is one of those times where things look really good from far away, but up close they look slightly comical. However, I think the idea of the whole thing is very interesting.
It was time to jump back in the buses (thank goodness, I couldn’t feel my toes!) and head back to Dresden proper. On the way to the buses, we saw a group of four riders leading their horses and it looked like they were going for a trail ride or something. I was suddenly very jealous and wanted to be home with my fourleggers.
On our way back to the city, we passed several Soviet ruins. One was an old prison and the other was a hospital. Both were painted in the typical soviet grey. We also passed, very slowly, a dairy that is somewhat famous. It’s called Pfund’s Molkerei, and the inside is tiled in tiny little mosaics. We would have stopped, but it is a very tiny place and they don’t allow pictures anyway.
1910 were already praised the business of the 1880 created dairy of the brothers Pfund as the most beautiful milk shop of the world.The equipment of the shop consists of fantasievoll arranged Majolikafliesen with motives of the dairy farming, with fable animals and floralen elements in the style of the Neorenaissance.
The handpainted representations on walls, floor and Verkaufstresen originate from the art department of the Dresdens Steingutfabrik Villeroy and Boch.
Once we were back in Dresden, we got out of the bus and walked around near the river. As we came to a monument of some sort, Gerald told us about Dresden Porcelain. For many years in Europe, porcelain was extremely expensive because it only came from China (thus the name for all the special plates that people only use when the extra important company is coming for dinner) and at one point, the prince of Saxony gathered together his artisans and ordered them to find a way to make porcelain. Eventually, one of them did, and in order to keep it a secret, the factory to make the porcelain was moved outside of the city. However, their secret was kept only about two years, and then the Viennese got a hold of it and started their own porcelain factories.
Meissen porcelain is the first European porcelain. It was successfully produced in a trial firing in 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. However after his untimely death Johann Friedrich Böttger, who continued his work, has often been credited with the invention. The Meissen production of porcelain started in 1710 and attracted artists and artisans to establish one of the most famous porcelain manufacturers, still in business as Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GmbH. Its signature logo, the crossed swords, was introduced in 1720 to protect its production; the mark of the crossed swords is one of the oldest trademarks in existence.
The Albrechtsburg was utilized to protect the secrets of the manufacture of the “white gold”. As a further precaution, very few workers knew the special secret (arcanum) of how to make porcelain, and then perhaps only part of the process. Thus, for a few years, Meissen retained its monopoly on the production of hard paste porcelain in Europe. By 1717, however, a competing production was set up at Vienna, as Samuel Stöltzel sold the secret recipe, which involved the use of kaolin, or "china clay". By 1760 about thirty porcelain manufacturers were operating in Europe, most of them, however, producing soft-paste porcelain for lack of local deposits of kaolin.
In order to identify the original Meissen products, Meissen developed markings that initially were painted on, but soon fired in underglaze blue. Early markings such as AR (Augustus Rex, the monogram of the King), K.P.M. (Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur), M.P.M. (Meissener Porzellan-Manufaktur), and K.P.F. ("Königliche Porzellan-Fabrik) were eventually replaced by the crossed swords logo. Introduced in 1720, it was used consistently after 1731 by official decree. Variations in the "crossed swords" logo allow approximate dating of the wares.
After walking along the river for a bit, we came to the University of the Arts. On top is a very unique piece. It looks kind of like one of those handheld orange juice makers. You know, the ones that you rotate inside half of an orange to make the juice. It’s made all out of glass, and I guess it’s pretty, but I’m not quite sure. I have several pictures of this building and the ones near it, which I’ll put up whenever I get the time or inclination with some captions. We also came across an astronomy statue or memorial. In the center is a globe that looks like there are high rises coming out of it and it’s not quite round. This is supposed to represent how, if we don’t take care of the earth, it will split and yadda yadda yadda. On the ground surrounding the globe are several disks with symbols of the Roman gods on them, as well as a little saying about each. I don’t know why, but I thought this was very interesting.
The architect Constantin Lipsius established in the years
1885 to 1894 the academy in the group with that exhibition building of the Saxonian art association.
The building, whose front is richly provided with bildhauerischem decoration, impresses because of its monumental arrangement in the Neorenaissancestil. The building crowns a vitreous dome, which coins/shapes the picture of the Altstädter Elbufers far away.
The building of the former academy of arts is used today by the” university for screen end of arts “, the areas of the art association is in the reconstruction.
On the side of one of the buildings, there is this huge mural-like image of princes on horses. It was originally done in the late 1700’s and documents the princes that ruled Saxony from the 1300’s through about 1750. The technique is to put down a layer of dark stone and then cover it with a light color. Then, to make the images of the princes and the horses and the procession, the artist etched into the lighter layer so the dark color could be seen underneath. However, the best materials weren’t used, so after a few years, it started to decay. The decision was made to have it replaced, and this process took over one hundred years. There are currently over 20,000 tiles on the wall, each hand painted and numbered. During the bombing of Dresden near the end of the Second World War, a few tiles were damaged and had to be replaced by the Soviets. These can be easily picked out because they are much lighter in color than the original tiles, due to a slightly different firing technique. One each end of the mural, the Soviets put up tiled portions that describe how horribly the tiles were damaged and why the people of Dresden should be grateful for their help in fixing the Procession of Princes. Our guide reminded us that we shouldn’t believe everything we read.
Prince course
Probably to objects of interest the 102 meters for a long time” prince course “counts the most well-known Dresden at the north wall of the stable yard.
In 35 survive-large figures the princes and kings of the Saxonian ruling family Wettin as well as representative of the Saxonian education middle class are explained.
The painter William walter created 1868 the cardboards for the Wandfries, which became to transfer from 1904 to 1907 to 25.000 jointless set Meissener porcelain tiles.
From there we walked over to the Frauenkirche, the church that is dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Dresden. This is a protestant church, since that is the predominant religion of the people. There is one well-known Catholic Church in Dresden, and that was built so that August the Strong could become king of both Poland and Saxony. Once he was crowned, he allowed his subjects to choose their religion, which was a very unique idea during that time period.
We got to go into the Frauenkirche for free because for about an hour or so on different days, they don’t charge admission. There was a huge line and I really didn’t think we’d get inside in a timely fashion, but low and behold, we did. It’s amazing. The outside of the Frauenkirche is very impressive, but the on first impression, the inside is more so. You walk in and look up, and there is this huge dome above you. The altar is simply magnificent and the colors are incredible. I say on first impression, because when the church was rebuilt, the columns inside weren’t made of marble. They were just painted to look like it. Now maybe I’m being nit-picky, but so much time and effort was put in to make the outside look like it did before Dresden was bombed, that I thought more attention to detail would have been paid inside. Don’t get me wrong, it looks stunning, but I thought that more would have been done, especially about the marble. However, we had a special treat because the organ was being played while we were inside. According to Gerald, this almost never happens, and we were very lucky to hear it.
During the bombing of Dresden, the Frauenkirche wasn’t actually bombed. But due to the extreme changes in temperature from the burning buildings surrounding it and the cold February air, the structure weakened and the building collapsed in on itself. Some of the old church remained standing, but it was mostly a pile of rubble until Queen Elisabeth II’s visit to Dresden in 1995. She decided then to aid in rebuilding the Frauenkirche, and the date for its consecration was to be in 2006. Of the rubble, that which was useful, was slowly and painfully put back into its original place and the sandstone was gathered from the same quarry as the original stones. Everything on the outside was done to make the Frauenkirche look as much like it did before the bombing as possible. You can pick out the old stones on the façade because they are darker than the new ones. The originals make up about sixteen percent of the façade. But why do they get dark in the first place, you ask. Well, we had that explained to us too. It’s not bomb dust or dirt. The sandstone reacts to magnesium oxide in the air and over time turns black. That’s why so many buildings in Europe are black like that.
The Dresdner Frauenkirche ("Church of Our Lady") is a Lutheran church in Dresden, Germany. Several other churches in Europe, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, also share the name of Frauenkirche.
The Dresden Frauenkirche was destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and has been reconstructed as a landmark symbol of reconciliation between former warring enemies. The reconstruction of its exterior was completed in 2004, its interior in 2005 and after 13 years of rebuilding, the church was reconsecrated on 30 October 2005 with festive services lasting through the Protestant observance of Reformation Day on 31 October.
Once a month, an Anglican Eucharist in English is held in the Frauenkirche, with clergy sent from St. George's Anglican Chaplaincy in Berlin.
The Frauenkirche was built as a Lutheran (Protestant) cathedral, even though Saxony's elector, Frederick August I (1670-1733), was Catholic.
The original baroque church was built between 1726 and 1743 and was designed by Dresden's city architect George Bähr (1666-1738), one of the greatest masters of German Baroque style, who did not live to see the completion of his greatest work. Bähr's distinctive design for the church captured the new spirit of the Protestant liturgy by placing the altar, chancel, and baptismal font directly centered in view of the entire congregation.
In 1736, famed organ maker Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753) built a three-manual, 43-stop instrument for the church. The organ was dedicated on 25 November and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) gave a recital on the instrument on 1 December.
The church's most distinctive feature was its unconventional 314-foot-high dome, called die Steinerne Glocke or "Stone Bell". An engineering triumph comparable to Michelangelo's dome for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Frauenkirche's 12,000-ton sandstone dome soared skyward with no internal supports. Despite initial doubts, the dome proved to be extremely stable. Witnesses in 1760 said that the dome had been hit by more than 100 cannonballs fired by the Prussian army led by Friedrich II during the Seven Years' War. The projectiles simply bounced off and the church survived.
The completed church gave the city of Dresden a distinctive silhouette, captured in famous paintings (see above) by Bernado Bellotto, a nephew to the artist Canaletto and also known by the same name.
In 1849 the church was at the heart of the revolutionary disturbances known as the May Uprising. The Frauenkirche was surrounded by barricades, and fierce fighting raged for days before those rebels who had not already fled were rounded up in the church and arrested.
For more than 200 years, the magnificent bell-shaped dome stood monumentally and gracefully over the skyline of old Dresden, dominating the city.
On 13 February 1945, Anglo-American allied forces began the bombing of Dresden. The church impressively survived two days and nights of the attacks and the eight interior sandstone pillars supporting the colossal dome held up long enough for the evacuation of 300 people who had sought shelter in the church crypt, before succumbing to the heat generated by some 650,000 incendiary bombs that were dropped on the city. The temperature surrounding and inside the church eventually reached 1,000 degrees Celsius [citation needed]. The dome finally collapsed at 10 a.m. on 15 February. The pillars glowed bright red and exploded; the outer walls shattered and nearly 6,000 tons of stone plunged to earth, penetrating the massive floor as it fell.
The altar, a relief depiction of Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives by Johann Christian Feige, was only partially damaged during the bombing raid and fire that destroyed the church. The altar and the structure behind it, the chancel, were among the remnants left standing. Features of most of the figures were lopped off by falling debris and the fragments lay under the rubble.
The building vanished from Dresden's skyline, and the blackened stones would lie in wait in a pile in the center of the city for the next 45 years as Communist rule enveloped what was now East Germany. Shortly after the end of World War II, residents of Dresden had already begun salvaging unique stone fragments from the Frauenkirche and numbering them for future use in reconstruction. Popular sentiment discouraged the authorities from clearing the ruins away to make a car park.
In 1982, the ruins began to be the site of a peace movement combined with popular peaceful protests against the East German regime. On the anniversary of the bombing, 400 Dresdeners came to the ruins in silence with flowers and candles, part of a growing East German civil rights movement. By 1989, the number of protesters in Dresden, Leipzig and other parts of East Germany had increased to tens of thousands, and the wall dividing East and West Germany toppled. This opened the way to the reunification of Germany.
There had already been intentions to rebuild the church during the last months of World War II. However, due to political circumstances in the GDR, the reconstruction later came to a halt. The heap of ruins was conserved as a war memorial within the inner city of Dresden, as a direct counterpart to the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by German bombing in 1940 and also serves as a war memorial in England. Because of the continuing decay of the ruins Dresden decided in 1985 (after the Semperoper was finally finished) to rebuild the Frauenkirche after the completion of the reconstruction of the Dresden castle.
After the reunification of Germany, efforts were revived. In 1989, a 14-member group of enthusiasts headed by Ludwig Güttler, a noted Dresden musician, formed a Citizens' Initiative. From that group emerged a year later "The Society to Promote the Reconstruction of the Frauenkirche", which began an aggressive private fundraising campaign. The organization grew to over 5,000 members in Germany and 20 other countries. A string of German auxiliary groups were formed, and three promotional organisations were created abroad.
The project gathered momentum. As hundreds of architects, art historians and engineers sorted the thousands of stones, identifying and labeling each for reuse in the new structure, others worked to raise money.
Günter Blobel, a German-born American saw the original Frauenkirche as a boy when his refugee family took shelter in a town just outside of Dresden days before the city was bombed. In 1994, he became the founder and president of the nonprofit "Friends of Dresden, Inc.", a United States organization dedicated to supporting the reconstruction, restoration and preservation of Dresden's artistic and architectural legacy. In 1999, Blobel won the Nobel Prize for medicine and donated the entire amount of his award money (nearly US$1 million) to the organization for the restoration of Dresden, to the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche and the building of a new synagogue. It was the single largest individual donation to the project.
In Britain, the Dresden Trust has the Duke of Kent as its royal patron and the Bishop of Coventry among its curators. Dr. Paul Oestreicher, a canon emeritus of Coventry Cathedral and a founder of the Dresden Trust, wrote [1] "The church is to Dresden what St. Paul's [Cathedral] is to London". Additional organizations include France's Association Frauenkirche Paris, Switzerlands Verein Schweizer Freunde der Frauenkirch, among others.
Rebuilding the Frauenkirche cost €180 million (£122 million / US$217 million). Dresdner Bank financed more than half of the reconstruction costs via a "donor certificates campaign", collecting almost €70 million after 1995. The bank itself contributed more than seven million euros, including more than one million donated by its employees. Over the years, thousands of watches containing tiny fragments of Frauenkirche stone were sold, as were specially printed medals. One sponsor raised nearly €2.3 million (US$2.75 million) through symbolic sales of individual church stones.
Funds raised were turned over to the "Frauenkirche Foundation Dresden", the actual rebuilder, backed by the State of Saxony, the City of Dresden and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony.
Using original plans used by builder Georg Bähr in the 1720s, reconstruction finally began in January 1993 under the direction of church architect and engineer Eberhard Burger. The foundation stone was laid in 1994, the crypt was completed in 1996 and the inner cupola in 2000.
As far as possible, the church – except for its dome – was rebuilt using original material and plans, with the help of modern technology. The heap of rubble was documented and carried off stone by stone. The approximate original position of each stone could be determined from its position in the heap. Every usable piece was measured and catalogued. A computer imaging program that could move the stones three-dimensionally around the screen in various configurations was used to help architects find where the original stones sat and how they fit together.
Of the millions of stones used in the rebuilding, more than 8,500 original stones were salvaged from the original church and approximately 3,800 reused in the reconstruction. As the older stones are covered with a darker patina, due to fire damage and weathering, the difference between old and new stones will be clearly visible for a number of years after reconstruction.
Two thousand pieces of the original altar were cleaned and incorporated into the new structure.
The builders relied on thousands of old photographs, memories of worshippers and church officials and crumbling old purchase orders detailing the quality of the mortar or pigments of the paint (as in the 1700s, copious quantities of eggs were used to make the color that provides the interior its almost luminescent glow).
When it came time to duplicate the oak doors of the entrance, the builders had only vague descriptions of the detailed carving. Because people (especially wedding parties) often posed for photos outside the church doors, they issued an appeal for old photographs and the response--which included entire wedding albums--allowed artisans to recreate the original doors.
The new gilded cross on top of the dome was forged by London Gold and Silversmiths Grant Macdonald using the original 18th-century techniques as much as possible. It was constructed by Alan Smith, a British goldsmith whose father, Frank, was a member of one of the aircrews who took part in the bombing of Dresden. Before travelling to Dresden, the cross was exhibited for five years in churches across the United Kingdom including Coventry Cathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh and St Paul's Cathedral in London. In February 2000, the cross was ceremonially handed over by Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, to be placed on the top of the dome a few days after the 60th commemoration of D-Day on 22 June 2004. The external structure of the Frauenkirche was completed. For the first time since the last war, the completed dome and its gilded cross grace Dresden's skyline as in centuries prior. The cross that once topped the dome, now twisted and charred, stands to the right of the new altar.
Seven new bells were cast for the church. They rang for the first time for the Pentecost celebration in 2003.
It was decided not to reproduce a facsimile of the Silbermann organ. The decision resulted in the Dresden organ dispute ("Dresdner Orgelstreit"), that was partially based on the misunderstanding that the new organ would be entirely "modern". A 4,873 pipe organ was built by Daniel Kern of Strasbourg, France and completed in April 2005. The Kern organ contains all the stops which also were on the stoplist of the Silbermann organ and tries to reconstruct them. Additional stops also are included, especially a fourth swell manual in the symphonic 19th century style which is apt for the organ literature composed after the baroque period.
A bronze statue of reformer and theologian Martin Luther, which survived the bombings, has been restored and again stands in front of the church. It is the work of sculptor Adolf von Donndorf from 1885.
The intensive efforts to rebuild this world famous landmark were completed in 2005, one year earlier than originally planned, and in time for the 800-year anniversary of the City of Dresden in 2006. The church was reconsecrated with a festive service one day before Reformation Day. The rebuilt church is a monument reminding people of its history and a symbol of hope and reconciliation.
There are two devotional services every day and two liturgies every Sunday. From October 2005 through the year 2010, there is an exhibition on the history and reconstruction of the Frauenkirche at the Stadtmuseum (City Museum) in Dresden's Alten Landhaus.
From the first day it was opened to the public, visitors began to cause some small problems, some appearing to consider the Frauenkirche as a place to go for fun rather than reflection. Many disregard the photography ban; some do not treat the church with the respect usually accorded to a religious site. During the 2005 Christmas period, for example, some people entered the church eating bockwurst and drinking mulled wine. During services, visitors stand up, walk around and take photographs. Several hymn-books and lighting fixtures have been stolen. There has been an average of more than ten thousand visitors a day in 2006
The rebuilding of the church was not without criticism. Since the rebuilding was part of a vast campaign to restore many buildings of Dresden (this being one of the largest rebuilding efforts ever in Europe), many have wondered what type of image is being produced/reproduced here. Furthermore, though the original fire-damaged stones of the old building were reused, they were placed, to a large extent, arbitrarily around the building with the help of a computer program. This raised certain interesting philosophical questions about the status of this building and its embedded memory.[1] And finally, since this building was not rebuilt using period technology, but instead with CATIA, a sophisticated computer modeling tool, questions have been raised about what it means actually to "reconstruct" old buildings.
After our visit to the church, it was time for lunch. We ate in the basement of an old castle, which had been renovated to become a restaurant. The waitresses dressed in costumes from about the 1600’s or so, and the food was very traditional. We had bread with all sorts of different spreads when we first arrived. One of the spreads was lard, which sounds extremely gross, but it was semi okay. It had little bits of crunchy stuff in it, and I pretty much decided that naked bread was the better way to go. Natalia tried some liver spread on hers, but that sort of adventure really wasn’t up my alley. The main course was pork, a potato knödel with a prune inside, and gravy. The pork was really good, and it came with a piece of skin on it, which was good too. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the knödel because the ones Alex made us were so much better. They were more dumpling-like, whereas these weren’t as fluffy. Dessert was my favorite part of the meal. It was kind of like a cheese strudel, which I’ve had in Vienna and is very good. The consistency of the cheese reminds me of galatapouriko (you have to say it out loud to get the phonetics of it, but basically it’s an awesome Greek dessert my mom makes) and it has a thin dough on the top and bottom. I was also perusing the menu around this point in time and looked at the wines that they had. One of them was called Dona Erika, and although I thought it was a bad idea to drink in the middle of the day, even in celebration of seeing my sister’s name, I thought it was a good idea to snitch the wine menu so she can see it. Am I a good sister or what? Natalia thought I was nuts, but since certain items in our apartment are permanently borrowed, she couldn’t really say too much. :-)
From lunch we went to the Art Museum. There were a few paintings that we saw that were somewhat important. The first of which was the Sistine Madonna. This was done by Raphael, and is the one with the angels on the bottom that are on pretty much everything these days. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, so I have to rely on Google image searches to get a picture up on here. The next was the Sleeping Venus, which was very important because it showed Venus sleeping, not just reclining. The Madonna with Cucina was the third we saw.
The Sleeping Venus, also known as the Dresden Madonna, is an extremely influential painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giorgione, c. 1501. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.
The painting, one of the last works by Giorgione, portrays a naked woman whose profile seems to follow that of the hills in the background. Giorgione put a great deal of effort into painting the background details and shadows. The choice of a naked woman marked a revolution in art, and is considered by some authorities one of the starting points of modern art.
The painting was unfinished at the time of his death. The sky was later finished by Titian. (Titian later painted a similar Venus, but it is not so agitated and unsettled as Giorgione's nude.)
Underlying erotic implications are made by Venus's raised arm (the exposed arm pit being a symbol of sexuality) and the placement of her left hand on her groin. The sheets are painted in silver, being a cold color rather than the more commonly used warm tones for linens, and they are rigid looking in comparison to those depicted in similar paintings by Titian or Velázquez. The landscape mimics the curves of the woman's body and this, in turn, relates the human body back to being a natural, organic object.
The contemplative attitude toward nature and beauty of the figure is typical of Giorgione. The composition of this painting influenced later painters such as, Ingres and Rubens. A direct link connects the Venus of Giorgione to that of Titian, and his Venus led directly to the Olympia of Manet.
The Sistine Madonna is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, circa 1512-1514. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (old masters) of Dresden, Germany.
The canvas with the Virgin, Child and Saints Sixtus and Barbara, usually called the Sistine Madonna, is characterized by an imaginary space created by the figures themselves. The figures stand on a bed of clouds, framed by heavy curtains which open to either side. The Virgin actually appears to descend from a heavenly space, through the picture plane, out into the real space in which the painting is hung. The gesture of St. Sixtus and the glance of St. Barbara seem to be directed toward the faithful, whom we imagine beyond the balustrade at the bottom of the painting. The Papal tiara, which rests on top of this balustrade, act as a bridge between the real and pictorial space.
The painting was probably intended to decorate the tomb of Pope Julius II, for the holy Pope Sixtus I was the patron saint of the Della Rovere family and St Barbara and the two winged 'genii' (visible at the bottom of the picture space) symbolize the funeral ceremony. The canvas was located in the convent of St Sixtus in Piacenza and was later donated by the monks to Augustus III, King of Saxony. It was carried to Moscow after the Second World War, and was later returned to Dresden.
Generations of visitors to the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden have been deeply impressed by the way in which Raphael portrayed the Madonna in this painting. It has been reproduced over and over again, and almost everyone is familiar with the putti leaning on the balustrade. The Madonna appears from behind a curtain, confident and yet hesitant. The curtain gives the illusion of hiding her figure from the eyes of the onlooker and at the same time of being able to protect Raphael's painting.
All of this art is housed in the Zwinger, which was the residential palace in Dresden back in the day. For the most part, the art in here is done on an extremely large scale. Most of it was interesting, but some of it I had to wonder why it was there. Maybe I’m just not an art person, but really people, do some of the famous artists really deserve to be? I think not.
Der Zwinger
The location was formerly part of the Dresden fortress of which the outer wall is conserved. The name derives from the German word Zwinger (outer ward of a concentric castle); it was for the cannons that were placed between the outer wall and the major wall. The Zwinger was not enclosed until the neoclassical building by Gottfried Semper called the Semper wing was built to host the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister art gallery.
Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony, returned from a grand tour through France and Italy in 1687–89, just at the moment that Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles. On his return to Dresden, having arranged his election as King of Poland (1697), he wanted something similarly spectacular for himself. The fortifications were no longer needed and provided readily available space for his plans. The original plans, as developed by his court architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann before 1711, covered the space of the present complex of palace and garden, and also included as gardens the space down to the Elbe River, upon which the Semper opera house and its square were built in the nineteenth century.
The Zwinger was designed by Pöppelmann and constructed in stages from 1710 to 1728. Sculpture was provided by Balthasar Permoser. The Zwinger was formally inaugurated in 1719, on the occasion of the electoral prince Frederick August’s marriage to the daughter of the Hapsburg emperor, the Archduchess Maria Josepha. At the time, the outer shells of the buildings had already been erected and, with their pavilions and arcaded galleries, formed a striking backdrop to the event. It was not until the completion of their interiors in 1728, however, that they could serve their intended functions as exhibition galleries and library halls.
The death of Augustus in 1733 put a halt to the construction because the funds were needed elsewhere. The palace area was left open towards the Semperoper square and the river. Later the plans were changed to a smaller scale, and in 1847–1855 the area was closed by the construction of the gallery wing now separating the Zwinger from the opera place; the architect was Gottfried Semper, who designed the opera.
The building was mostly destroyed by the carpet bombing raids of February 13-15, 1945. The art collection had been evacuated before, though. After the war, in a referendum, the people of Dresden voted to restore the building and generally preferred to rebuild the glories of the city, instead of having the ruins bulldozed to make way for the architecture of socialist realism then prevalent in the German Democratic Republic.
Albeit somewhat small, the Zwinger's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) became a star attraction in Dresden's rich cultural heritage. It now houses collections of fine art and scientific treasures. There is a collection of old masters, with paintings of Rubens, Canaletto, Raphael and many others. The Rüstkammer (Armory) houses a fine collection of weapons and armor, mostly dating from the 16th and 17th century. Also there is a collection of Meissen porcelain and clocks and scientific instruments. The building also holds the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon.
At the end of the tour, we were free to do what we wanted for the rest of the night. I decided to work on my blog in a word document so I didn’t forget anything. Since it was Super Bowl Sunday, most of the people on the trip decided to stay up and watch it at one of the bars in town. I just couldn’t get myself excited enough to stay awake and haul my butt to some smoky place to watch football and not get the commercials. I think I may have been the only person on the trip that got a decent night’s sleep that night. It seemed like most people had only about three hours of sleep and one hell of a hangover the next morning.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Even though I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I conked out on the bus for about an hour on our way to Weimar. It only took about two hours to get there, which wasn’t too bad, and we only got lost once! Our guides spoke only German, so we were divided up into two groups for our tour of Weimar. One went with one woman, and the other group went with the second and Anne, one of the reception girls, translated for them. I was in the German group, and for the most part, I understood the jist of what she was saying. It seemed like a lot of her presentation was memorized dates, and not a lot of interesting anecdotes about the famous people who lived in Weimar at different times. Two of the most famous were Goethe and Schiller. I’m pretty sure we heard their life stories, but since most of our guides sentences started out “In (insert year),” I have to admit that I zoned out at parts.
Weimar is one of the great cultural sites of Europe, having been home to such luminaries as Goethe, Schiller, and Herder. It has been a site of pilgrimage for the German intelligentsia since Goethe first moved to Weimar in the late 18th century. The tombs of Goethe and Schiller as well as their archives, may be found in the city.
The period in German history from 1919-1933 is commonly referred to as the Weimar Republic, as the Republic's constitution was drafted here because the capital, Berlin, with its street rioting after the 1918 German Revolution, was considered too dangerous for the National Assembly to convene there. Weimar was beside Dessau the center of the Bauhaus movement. The city houses art galleries, museums and the German national theatre. The Bauhaus University and the Liszt School of Music Weimar attracted many students, specializing in media and design, architecture, civil engineering and music, to Weimar.
During World War II, there was a concentration camp near Weimar, at Buchenwald, a little wood that Goethe had loved to frequent only 8 kilometers from the city center. More than 55,000 prisoners entered the gates bearing the mottos "Jedem das Seine" ("to each his due") and "Recht oder Unrecht—Mein Vaterland" ("right or wrong—my fatherland").[citation needed]
From 1949 to 1990 Weimar was in East Germany.
The European Council of Ministers selected the city as a European Capital of Culture for 1999.
On September 3, 2004, a fire broke out at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library. The library contains a 13,000-volume collection including Goethe's masterpiece Faust, in addition to a music collection of the Duchess. An authentic Lutheran Bible from 1534 was saved from the fire. The damage stretched into the millions of dollars. The number of books in this historic library exceeded 1,000,000, of which 40,000 to 50,000 were destroyed. The library belongs to UNESCO world heritage, and is one of the oldest public libraries in Europe. The fire, with its destruction of much historical literature, amounts to a huge cultural loss for Germany, Europe, and indeed the world. A number of books were shock-frozen in the city of Leipzig to save them from rotting.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Johann Wolfgang Goethe , IPA: [gøːtə], later von Goethe, (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath: he was a poet, novelist, dramatist, humanist, scientist, theorist, painter, and for ten years chief minister of state for the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality ("Empfindsamkeit"), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of Faust and Theory of Colours, he influenced Darwin[1] with his focus on plant morphology[2]. Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a primary source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry, and philosophy. He is widely considered to be one of the most important thinkers in Western culture.
Johann Christoph Friedrich (later: von) Schiller (November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805), was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. During the last several years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe, with whom he discussed much on issues concerning aesthetics, encouraging Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches; this thereby gave way to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Die Xenien (The Xenies), a collection of short but harshly satiric poems in which both Schiller and Goethe verbally attacked those persons they perceived to be enemies of their aesthetic agenda.
Lunch was another interesting meal. We went to a Gasthaus, and we had preordered our food on the bus, which made life a lot easier. I had decided on the fish and chips because I was promised French fries. What can I say? I love my transfats. We also had our choice of soups and I got vegetable. The girl at our table that got the tomato said that it was definitely not like Campbell’s. I thought everything at this restaurant was great, and what made it all even better was the fact that we go dessert, which was ice cream, raspberries, and whipped cream. It was really good!
After lunch, we loaded back onto the buses and continued on our way to Berlin. This felt like it took a lot longer, but I think in actuality, we were there in only about three hours. Of course, when you’re bored, everything seems to take a bit longer. I’m pretty sure I also dozed on this bus trip too.
When we got to the hostel, the three other girls I lived with over the weekend decided they wanted to do the same thing again, so we got assigned our room keys and roommates. With just a short enough break to put our stuff upstairs and do some minor settling in, we had to get back downstairs for a quick orientation meeting. Afterwards, the night was ours, and again, I decided to stay in and be a bum. I was promised Internet in this hostel, and I got it, kind of. I kept getting kicked off, and not receiving messages or anything. However, I managed to get some of my blog up, and would have put up more, but my access to wikipedia was very limited. Since the hostel is right across from the IES Berlin center, I think I may go there in the next couple of days and get the rest up.
Tuesday February 6, 2007
Today was a very awesome day. We started out with a semi-lazy morning because our tour met at 10:00 instead of the previous days’ 8:30 start. Breakfast was as it always seems to be here in Europe – rolls and jam. And that’s totally okay with me, but I wish they’d have orange juice or something. I’m not a big enough fan of coffee to get addicted to it and feel like I need to have it every morning, just because I drank for the past few days. We had a really good conversation about old movies at our table. Laura and Will were comparing Hitchcock movies and then going on tangents about the actors in each. Since I don’t watch Hitchcock (I lean a lot more toward the romantic comedy side of things), I didn’t have much to contribute, but it was interesting all the same. And it felt oddly cultured…go figure.
Our guide for the bus tour was amazing. She very much loved Berlin and has lived here her entire life. Because of this, she was able to give us a very good sense of the city and instill some of that love for it in us. We drove away from the hostel and she pointed out different sights as well as some spots to visit later at night. Our first stop where we got off of the bus was at the East Side Gallery, which is a portion of the Berlin Wall that artists have painted. In 2000, parts of it were restored because when it was originally done, people thought it was only a temporary thing. They wanted to get rid of the Wall completely, but I guess this attracted so many tourists that it stayed. You can see where the weather and graffiti artists have left their mark, but more and more portions are being restored. I really thought that this was amazing, and made a mental note to visit it again before I left. Paintings are part art, part political statement.
The East Side Gallery is an international memorial for freedom. It is a 1.3km long section of the Berlin Wall located near the centre of Berlin on Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain.
The gallery consists of approximately 106 paintings [1] by artists from all over the world, painted on the east side of the Berlin Wall. It is possibly the largest and everlasting open air gallery in the world. The first painting was started by Christine Mac Lean in December 1989 immediately after the fall of the wall. Paintings from Kasra Alavi, Kani Alavi, Jim Avignon, Thierry Noir, Ingeborg Blumenthal, Ignasi Blanch i Gisbert and others are followed.
The paintings at the East Side Gallery document the time of change and express the euphoria and great hopes for a better and free future for all people of the world.
Unfortunately, two-thirds of the paintings are badly damaged by erosion, graffiti, and vandalism. One-third has been restored by a non-profit organization which started work in 2000. The objective of this organization is the eventual restoration and preservation of all the paintings.
For tourists the most interesting part of the East Side Gallery is the section close to station Ostbahnhof where all the paintings were completely restored. Also of interest is the river-side part of the East Side Gallery which shows the current art of Berlin's graffiti scene.
We saw pretty much all the highlights of Berlin on our tour, but we didn’t get the chance to really get out and see much of it up close. It was one of those whirlwind tour things like Dresden, but the set up of it made a lot more logical sense. I pretty much said, “this looks cool, I’ll have to visit it again.”
Lunch was underneath the Sony Center, and I just grabbed some pizza from a stand in there. Before we had to get on the bus again, we took pictures of the clock in Potsdamer Platz. If you look at old pictures before World War Two, you see this clock in the middle of the square, and the one in my pictures today is the same clock. It also had the first street light in it. There was a policeman that sat in the tower and manually changed the lights over. Side note: The lights here in Germany go yellow before they go green and red. It’s very interesting, and I’m pretty sure it’s a good idea because you don’t get people that aren’t paying attention and don’t move at a green light. You also see drivers start to creep forward before it’s actually green, which, when you’re crossing the street, can be a bit scary.
Potsdamer Platz is an important square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about 1 km south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the south east corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some 25 km to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate.
It may seem strange that something which today lies right in the centre of Berlin, was once not in the city at all, for Potsdamer Platz began as a trading post just outside its old customs wall. The history of Potsdamer Platz can probably be traced back to 29 October 1685, when the Tolerance Edict of Potsdam was signed, whereby Friedrich Wilhelm, Great Elector of Brandenburg and Prussia from 1640 to 1688, allowed large numbers of religious refugees, including Jews from Austria and Huguenots expelled from France, to settle on his territory (indeed, for a while as much as 20% of Berlin’s population was French speaking). Two other things resulted from this huge influx. Firstly, Berlin’s mediaeval fortifications, recently rebuilt from 1658-74 in the form of a Dutch-style water-fortress, on an enormous scale and at great expense, became virtually redundant overnight; and secondly, the already crowded city became even more congested.
So several new districts were founded around the city's perimeter, just outside the old fortifications. The biggest of these was Friedrichstadt, just south west of the historic core of Berlin, begun in 1688 and named after new Elector Friedrich Wilhelm III, who later became became King Friedrich I of Prussia. Its street layout followed the Baroque-style grid pattern much favoured at the time, and was based on two main axes: Friedrichstraße running north-south, and Leipziger Straße running east-west. All the new suburbs were absorbed into Berlin around 1709-10. From 1723 a westwards expansion of Friedrichstadt was planned under the orders of King Friedrich Wilhelm I, and this was completed in 1732-4 by architect Philipp Gerlach the Younger (1679-1748). In this expansion, a new north-south axis emerged: Wilhelmstraße.
In 1735-7, after Friedrichstadt’s expansion was complete, a customs wall, 8 km long, was erected around Berlin’s new perimeter. Consisting of a wooden palisade at first, it was later replaced with a brick and stone wall, pierced by 17 gates were where roads entered the city. Here taxes were levied on goods passing through, chiefly meat and flour. The most prestigious gate was the Brandenburg Gate, for the important road from Brandenburg, but 1 km to the south was the entry point of another road that gained great significance.
This road had started out in the Middle Ages as a lane running out from Berlin to the hamlet of Schoneberg, but it had developed into part of a trading route running across Europe from Paris to St. Petersburg via Aachen, Berlin and Konigsberg. In 1660 the Great Elector had made it his route of choice to Potsdam, where his palace was located, and had recently been renovated. Starting in 1754 a daily stagecoach ran between Berlin and Potsdam, although the road was in poor shape. But in 1740 Friedrich the Great had become King. Not a great lover of Berlin, he later built a new palace, (the Sanssouci Palace), at Potsdam in 1744-7, followed by the New Palace in 1763-9, so the road now had to be made fit for a King, plus all his courtiers and staff. After numerous other improvements, in 1791-3 this section was made into Prussia's first all-weather road. It later became Potsdamer Straße; its point of entry into Berlin became the Potsdam Gate, and it was around this gate that Potsdamer Platz was to develop.
After 1990, the square became the focus of attention again, since it was an attractive location suddenly at the center of the city. The city government chose to divide the area into four parts, each to be sold to a commercial investor, which then planned new construction. During the building-phase the Potsdamer Platz was the largest building site in Europe.
The largest of these four parts went to Daimler-Benz, now part of Daimler-Chrysler, who charged Renzo Piano with creating a master plan for the new construction. The individual buildings were then built by many individual architects according to that plan. This includes the remarkable Potsdamer Platz No. 1 by Hans Kollhoff, now home to a number of prestigious law firms (in the photo on the right, the tall brick building in the center). Potsdamer Platz is also home to the Panoramapunkt viewing platform, located 100 m above ground level, which is accessed by riding Europe's fastest elevator. From the Panoramapunkt one can see such landmarks as the Die Bahn headquarters, Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Federal Chancellery, Bellevue Palace, Cathedral, Gendarmes Market, Holocaust Memorial and Commemoration Church.
The second largest part went to Sony, which erected its new European headquarters there. This new Sony Center by Helmut Jahn, an impressive, yet light monolith of glass and steel (the rightmost building in the picture on the right), is considered by many to be one of the finest pieces of modern architecture in Berlin.
The whole project was the subject of much criticism from the beginning, and still not everyone applauds how the district was commercialized and replanned. However, the plaza now attracts several thousand visitors a day, and some critics may be surprised by the success of the new quarter. At almost any time of the day, the place is alive with people. It has become a must-see for visitors, a top shopping area for tourists and probably the number-one spot to go for english speaking film fans, with more than 40 screens in three cinemas, including an english speaking cinema, a film academy and a film museum.
Some scenes of the 1987 Wim Wenders movie Der Himmel über Berlin (English title: Wings of Desire) are located on the old, almost entirely void Potsdamer Platz before the Wall fell. The movie thus gives a good impression of the surroundings at the time, which are completely unlike what can be seen today.
After lunch we drove around a bit more and saw more sights. I know this is being incredibly ambiguous about what we saw, but since I plan on revisiting most of it, you’ll get a much better description later in the week, so don’t fret. Then we had the afternoon to ourselves. I decided to go to the Egyptian exhibit with Natalia, which is on Museum Island. Since it’s only about a ten-minute walk from our hostel, it wasn’t a big deal. Once we got there, we decided to visit the Berliner Dom first and hit up the museum second. Of course, we got the obligatory pictures of the outside, but the inside of the Church was really where it was at.
We had to pay three euro to get inside, but I think to date, it was the best three euro I’ve spent. The church itself was magnificent. It’s where a lot of previous emperors are interred, which is kind of creepy in my mind, but the other decorations are very interesting and I remember thinking that it would be great to be a kid in that church because there would be so much to look at while the service was going on. The church was protestant because there was a statue of Martin Luther inside. The altar was very cool, all gold and silver, and the inside of the dome was painted with different scenes. Before we left, Natalia and I decided to walk upstairs for a different view. You can see the altar from this viewpoint in a couple of my pictures. There was also a sign up there to go up to the cupola. Since I think I’m somewhat of a masochist, and I’m a bit scared of heights, we went up. And up and up. It felt like we were climbing stairs forever. At first they were real stairs, like marble with carpet. Then they became cement stairs, followed by a hallway that made me wonder if that was it. Next there was a door with a set of spiral wooden stairs that led up even higher. By this time, my heart was pounding and adrenaline was running through my veins. Like I said, I’m a bit of a wimp. Finally, there was one more door that led to an outside walkway around the dome. And it was the most incredible thing I’ve done in Berlin, or maybe so far this semester. The view was amazing – you could see far and wide over the rooftops of Berlin. I could see a lot (the roofs) of what we had seen on our tour earlier in the day. Around the dome are several angels that I took pictures of too, and I hope come out kind of cool. And since none of the other IES people visited that church or went up onto the cupola, we’re the only ones with pictures like that.
After doing a lap or so around the cupola and taking a lot of pictures (with the strap of my camera over my wrist, just in case), we decided to go back down and head over to the museum. On the way down and out, we passed a room that displayed model churches. Some of these were nifty, so I took some pictures. We also had to go out through the basement and got to look at all the sarcophaguses, which wasn’t my favorite thing. I have to admit, it’s a little creeping looking at boxes containing people who have been dead for a couple hundred years.
The Berliner Dom or Berlin Cathedral in Berlin, Germany was built between 1895 and 1905. It faces the Lustgarten and the Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace).
The first church built near here in 1465 was the court chapel for the Hohenzollern family within the castle complex. Later the church of the Dominican Order (Schwarze Brüder), located at the south side of the castle, was used as the first cathedral. The first church at this site was a baroque cathedral by Johann Boumann, which was completed in 1747 and, in 1822, remodelled in the neoclassicist style by the Berlin architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
In 1894, on German Emperor Wilhelm II's order, this domed building was demolished and replaced by the current cathedral designed by Julius Raschdorff. At 114 m long, 73 m wide and 116 m tall, it was much larger than any of the previous buildings and was considered a Protestant counterweight to St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.
During the Second World War, the building was bombed by the Allies and severely damaged. A temporary roof was installed to protect what remained of the interior and in 1975 reconstruction started. The restoration of the interior was begun in 1984 and in 1993 the church reopened. During reconstruction, the original design was modified into a simpler, less tall form.
The Egyptian exhibit was okay. I got to see the head of Nephrotite that everyone has in their history or geography books at some point in their lives. Since that was what I really wanted to see in there, I zipped through the rest, stopping here and there to read a bit or listen to part of the recording in the headset I got. There were some cool things in the exhibit, but I was more interested in seeing other things around the city. After about forty-five minutes (pretty much the entire length of my attention span), I went down to the ground floor and got a nifty picture of a Nike statue and looked at some Roman artifacts. Then I left the museum for real and headed back toward the hostel for a bit. I passed the other museums, but I really didn’t have any inclination at that point to visit them. And since I had spent more on museums (including the church) that day than I had spent on food the last few (don’t worry, it’s included – I’m not starving myself), I saved a few coins for some other time.
I still had a lot of time before I had to be back at the hostel, and decided to go exploring for a little bit. There was a sign for the New Synagogue pointing across the bridge and since that sounded like an interesting idea, I headed that way. We had also seen it from the outside during our tour, and I wanted to go back to visit it.
It took a bit of searching to find the Synagogue, but it wasn’t that bad. Finding the right entrance was a bit harder. Originally, it was just a synagogue, but over the years it has expanded to include a museum and gift shop as well. Even more interesting, I had to go through security to get inside, like with the x-ray machines and the whole nine yards. I think I’m getting pretty good at this whole security thing because I managed to get through it on one try. Inside was another sign for going up into the onion-like dome for a view of the city. Since I apparently hadn’t had enough heights for one day, I said to myself, “what’s another hundred stairs or so?” and proceeded to start that climb. This was only one euro, and even though not as impressive as the Berliner Dom, the view here was good too. They also had some information on the history of the synagogue and what you were seeing outside the windows, which I found interesting. I explored a bit more, but pictures weren’t allowed, so I don’t have anything of my own to put up for you all to see. I’ll just google it and see what I find.
The Neue Synagoge (Eng. "New Synagogue") was built 1859-1866 as the main synagogue of the Berlin Jewish community, in Oranienburger Strasse. Because of its splendid eastern moorish style and resemblance to the Alhambra, it is an important architectural monument of the second half of the 19th Century in Berlin.
The original building was designed by Eduard Knoblauch. Following Knoblauch's succumbing to illness, Friedrich August Stüler took responsibility for the majority of its construction as well as for its interior arrangement and design. It was inaugurated in the presence of Chancellor Count Otto von Bismarck in 1866.
Since it was getting late, I ran to a DM, which is kind of like our CVS without the pharmacy and picked up more moisturizer and a scrubby because I had forgotten mine back in Vienna. I ran into Zach there and we walked back to the hostel together since we were meeting there at five to go to dinner.
Dinner turned out to be one of those surprisingly good meals. We went to a rather nice restaurant, and the wine was only two euro per glass. Everything food-wise was preordered for us, all we had to do was decide what to drink. I chose the white wine, and I was pretty impressed. There’s a bit of a difference between a two-euro bottle of wine and a two-euro glass of wine. This one didn’t make me make faces. There were bread baskets set out on the tables with wonderful sourdough bread in them. It was soft and warm on the inside and nice and crusty on the outside. Just thinking about it now makes me crave more. We had a salad, but it’s not the kind of salad you think of in the States. Here, salads are more of a mish-mash of a bunch of different kinds of vegetables and not as much lettuce or dressing. I liked it well enough, but the main course was the best. We got turkey and mushrooms in gravy with spätzel and steamed vegetables. This was so good that I cleaned up the last dregs of gravy with the last of the bread. It was incredible! Dessert turned out to be chocolate-vanilla-strawberry ice cream with fresh fruit and whipped cream.
Once everything was paid for, we headed back to the hostel in the bus and Natalia and Laura and I discussed going to the Brandenburg Gate for some pictures and maybe the Sony Center because Matt had said that it looks great at night. It was a bit chilly and damp outside, but we wanted to tough it out and walk to the gate, which was only about a ten-minute walk from the hostel. Our pictures turned out okay, I just have to remember to stop breathing when I zoom in or else it gets a bit blurry. From there, we walked over to the Garden of Remembrance and explored that.
It was built in the 1990’s as a holocaust memorial. Pretty much it consists of large stone blocks of different heights on an uneven surface. I haven’t been through it during the day yet, but at night it can feel a bit menacing. Which is exactly how the designer wanted you to feel. It’s hard to get physically disoriented in there, but emotionally you start spooking yourself. At first it was just a game to try and find each other in there, but then when we got more separated, I started thinking what a great hiding place it would be for potential rapists. Yes, I know, I have such positive thoughts. Either way, I got out of there pretty quickly after that. Natalia and Laura took a bit longer to come out because they tried taking some pictures. I think I’ll just wait for another day when I can see what I’m taking pictures of.
BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- Berlin has unveiled a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, ending 17 years of charged debate over how Germany should remember that grim period of its history.
The tribute to the six million European Jews killed by the Nazi government more than 60 years ago is a stone's throw from the buried ruins of Adolf Hitler's bunker.
In the heart of Berlin, near the Reichstag and Brandenburg gate, Berlin's newest and most powerful reminder of the Final Solution will ensure that no Jews murdered by the Third Reich are forgotten.
From outside, the 2,711 dark gray slabs form a gentle wave, ankle-high in some places, designed to give visitors a sense of groundlessness, of instability, a loss of orientation.
While the memorial will be greeted by many Germans it may attract vandals, said the politician who unveiled it Tuesday.
"I believe it will be accepted by the younger generation, but surely not by everyone," Wolfgang Thierse, speaker of the Bundestag parliament, told German radio.
"There will be opposition, indifference, denial."
But its Jewish American architect Peter Eisenman says even though the memorial will be open around the clock, he is not worried about graffiti.
The architect even opposed an official decision to coat the slabs with a chemical making it easier to remove any tagging.
And that was not because the chemical was made by Degussa, makers of the Zyklon B gas used in the gas chambers during the war, a controversy in itself.
''I didn't want the graffiti coating, because I think vandalism is an expression of the city. We have it in American cities, and I think in a certain way it's positive. It's an outlet," Eisenman says.
Under the memorial are the stories of holocaust victims, like the Haberman family from the polish city of Borislaw.
Like tens of thousands of other Jews, mother Sala died in the Belzec concentration camp.
The father Fischel and their children were sent to a labor camp, most of them murdered. But one child, Sabina, survived.
Critics of the long-debated project say the memorial should be for all victims of the Third Reich, not only Jews. But the designer disagrees.
''They were the only people singled out for extermination. There was a plan to exterminate the race," Eisenman says.
Now, 60 years after Germany's Jewish population was virtually eliminated, their memory has a clear and indelible mark on the country's heart.
Our next stop was the Sony Center. I have to give Matt credit, he knew what he was talking about when he told me to go there at night. The Sony Center has these huge pieces of silk, I think, on the ceiling that they light up at night. The colors fade from blue to purple to pink and back to blue. I think the pictures I took will turn out pretty good. There were also some statues that looked like playground toys, which we proceeded to play on and take pictures of. It was a good time, except for the whole cold part.
Since it was getting late and the other two wanted to go out with a group of people a bit later, we started thinking about going home. Natalia really wanted to use the subway because she was cold, and figuring out that map and where we had to be took a bit of time. But the subway was warmer than being outside, so I was good with it. My fingers and my toes were bright red anyway, so the little bit of warmth was very nice. Once we figured out the whole U-Bahn system, it was easy sailing. The hostel stop was only about six minutes from the Sony Center and from there we had to walk a few blocks, but our hostel is situated very nicely near public transportation and tourist attractions.
I was cold again by the time we got back to the hostel so I stayed in for the evening and worked on my blog. A lot of other people went out and had some interesting stories to tell when they came back. We’ll just say I’m glad I stayed here.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Today turned out to be a beautiful day. Although it was still extremely cold and bitter (not as much so as State College has been recently), the sky was blue and pictures came out good. Our first stop after breakfast was the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. I think it was really interesting to read the stories of people whose lives had been affected by the Berlin Wall. I like reading escape stories and personal accounts of soldiers and civilians on both sides. I spent a good hour and a half walking around in the Museum, and although it was interesting, in some parts, it was easier to read the German explanation of the exhibit because the English translation made no sense. There were also references to things that maybe someone in Europe would know, but I didn’t – like the Famine of Ukraine.
Checkpoint Charlie was a crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. Others on the Autobahn to the West were Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, southeast of Wannsee, named from the NATO phonetic alphabet. Many other checkpoints existed, some for German citizens, others for foreigners and members of Allied forces. Checkpoint Charlie is at the junction of Friedrichstraße with Zimmerstraße and — amazingly — Mauerstraße ('Wall Street') in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood, in the heart of Berlin, which was divided by the Berlin Wall. The Soviets simply called it the Friedrichstraße Crossing Point.
Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of east and west, and — for some East Germans — a gateway to freedom. It is frequently featured in spy movies and books, such as those by John le Carré.
The checkpoint was curiously asymmetrical. During its 27-year active life, the infrastructure on the Eastern side was expanded to include not only the wall, watchtower and zig-zag barriers, but a multi-lane shed where cars and their occupants were checked. However the American authorities, perhaps not wanting to concede that the division of Germany might be anything other than a temporary aberration, never erected any permanent buildings, and made do with the iconic wooden shed.
Today, the museum next to the checkpoint struggles to keep alive the memory of what is now something between an embarrassment and a tourist attraction.
From there, I went with a group of girls back to the East Side Gallery to see the rest of the Wall and take some more pictures. For some reason, I think this is the absolutely coolest thing. We had about an hour or so there and we had to make our way back to the Jewish Museum for the tours there. I’d just like to add in here that I asked directions of people in German and actually got to where I needed to be, so I want you all out there to be impressed with me.
The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin) is a museum in Berlin covering two millennia of German Jewish history.
The Jewish Museum in Berlin was originally founded in Oranienburger Strasse in 1933. It was closed in 1938 by the Nazi regime. The idea to revive the museum was first voiced in 1971, and an "Association for a Jewish Museum" was founded in 1975. A Jewish department of the Berlin Museum was opened after the Berlin Museum first displayed an exhibition on Jewish history in Berlin in 1978. In 1999 the Jewish Museum Berlin was granted status as an independent institution. A building by Daniel Libeskind was finished in 1999 and officially opened in 2001.
The director of the museum is Professor W. Michael Blumenthal, who is originally from Berlin and was US Secretary of the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter.
The building is very distinctive from other museums, since it doesn't respond to any functional requirements, but is rather constructed to create spaces that tell the story of the Jewish people in Germany. The museum itself is a work of art, blurring the lines between architecture and sculpture.
The view from above is that of a large zig-zag line, which earned it the nickname "blitz", German word for thunderbolt. The main building is covered with zinc plating, and the windows are just lines that cross the surface in a random fashion. These lines were created from connecting different sites in a Berlin map that are important to Jewish history. This building has no access of any kind from the street. The entrance is located in an adjacent building, a museum of German history, through a staircase and tunnel embedded in a concrete tower that goes through all the floors of the German museum. This symbolizes that German and Jewish history are inseparable, violent and secret. The staircase leads to an underground site, composed of three hallways, called axes: The Axis of Death, leads to a concrete tower that has been left empty, called The Holocaust Tower; The Axis of Exile, which leads to an exterior square courtyard composed of concrete columns and that has been tilted in one of its corners, called The Garden of Exile; and The Axis of Continuity, that goes through the other two hallways, representing the permanence of Jews in Germany in spite of the Holocaust and the Exile. This axis leads to a staircase, which in turn leads to the main building. The entrance to the museum is intentionally made difficult and long to instill in the visitor the feeling of challenge and hardship that is distinctive of Jewish history.
The main building, even though it seems skewed and irregular in general, hides a straight but discontinuous line, marked by hollow concrete towers painted black, with little windows from which visitors only can see the other visitors in opposite windows. One of these towers was called the Memory Void for those affected by the Holocaust. Menashe Kadishman's 'Shalechet' ('Fallen leaves') installation filled this void with 10,000 coarsely made iron faces. Visitors are permitted to walk on the work. Doing so creates an almost 'industrial' noise, something with deep meaning.
The Jewish Museum isn’t just about the Holocaust; it covers all of Jewish history in Germany. The building was actually designed to be somewhat of an exhibit in and of itself, and isn’t always conducive to displays. We started off by going into the basement, which has three wings, at least the way it was presented to us. The first we visited was the Hall of Exile, which ended in a glass wall. On the walls are all of the places the Jews went before the Holocaust. Most days you can go outside into the Garden of Exile but today it was closed so that they could prune the olive trees. In the Garden are forty-nine stone columns and the ground in on about a ten-degree incline. Our guide told us that this was done to create a sense of disorientation, but other guests have said that it goes away after about half an hour when your body adjusts. The second hall we visited was the Hall of Persecution and on the walls there were the names of concentration camps and work camps that the Jews were sent to during Hitler’s reign. I should mention that the floors are not even down in the basement area. They slope at different angles to create different effects. In this particular hall, the floor sloped up and the walls and ceiling closed in on you to create a somewhat trapped sense. The Hall of Persecution ended in a door that led to the Tower. Once you’re inside they close the door. You can’t see out because there are no windows, but you can hear the noise of everyday life still going on. There is no heat or air conditioning, so it was also very cold. Over the top of the tower where a roof would normally be is a large piece of fabric with only a very small opening to let through only a shaft of light in one corner. On the other side is a ladder, which doesn’t go all the way to the floor. Our guide told us that this wasn’t a part of the original plan and was put there for technical reasons, but it takes on some of the sense of the Tower and adds to the feeling of insignificance and hopelessness that’s created in there. The Tower also isn’t a perfect box; there are sharp angles and tiny corners, and whole thing makes you want to huddle up close to the wall and try to hide.
 The Garden of Exile |  The Holocaust Tower |  The Holocaust Tower |  A view of some of the displays in the Jewish Museum |
The third hall we visited was called the Hall of Eternity. For this one you have to climb a ton of stairs, which I’m sure has some significance because it seems like every other detail in the building does. On one side are several windows that overlook the Garden and you can see the olive trees that grow on top of the columns. The idea of this particular hall is interesting, but the stairs killed me. There’s something about these Europeans and building ridiculously high buildings and for some reason I feel like I have to climb to the top of each one. My quads were screaming at me the whole way up (and down) every staircase I used that day. I figure it’s pretty decent exercise, but I’d like to be able to walk normally again.
As we were going through the Museum, we got bits and pieces of information about the Jews in Europe and specifically Germany. Back in the Middle Ages, the Jews, especially the women, would have to take many ceremonial baths. Because of this, they were actually much cleaner people (the water came from the earth or the rain, not from a city source which would have been dirty) and weren’t as sick or affected by the Plague as much.
Before we left the Museum, we visited one last architectural detail. Hidden away is the Memory Void, which contains faces cut from metal. They are on their sides, two or three high, and you’re told to walk over them. They clang and bang, and the whole experience is extremely disturbing. This is the first time I’ve met with architecture that makes me feel like that, and as much as I’m not sure I like it, the fact that it can evoke those emotions is incredible.
After a quick run-through of the gift shop, we walked home to chill out for a bit before we decided on what to do for dinner. About twelve of us walked around the block to an Indian restaurant we had seen our first night here. All the entrees were half off, which in amazing in and of itself. Of course, I got chicken biryani. I also ordered a glass of chardonnay, which I’ve decided I like. Both were very good, but nothing beats Indian Pavilion back in State College. I pigged out a bit and ate all of it, but that’s okay because we had a very leisurely dinner (think about three hours). Following dinner, we came back to the hostel and talked about going somewhere for a quick dessert. We lost a few, and nine of us hunted up a café. I had a very nice chat with my wonderful boyfriend :-) on the walk there. But then he had to go teach the noobs how to dance, and I had to be somewhat social.
It was called the Einstein café, and it was the sort of place that locals go to and the waiters know their customers. The prices reflected that. For three of us to get mélanges and split an apple strudel, it was over fifteen euro. We should have just gone into a store and bought a chocolate cake to cart back to the hostel with us. That was one of the ideas as we were walking, but that got booed down by the louder minority. Next time, we hit up a store and they can go spend obscene amounts of money for coffee. It had started to snow on our way back, so Corinne and I did a version of the Penn State Walk to get back in a timely fashion. I always feel like I’m walking so slowly here when I’m with other people. Maybe it’s just a Penn State thing, but I miss people that walk with purpose.
And now, dear people, because I'm low on battery and I'm pretty sure by now you all are going googly-eyed from reading all about my adventures. I'll post again tomorrow afternoon to finish up the week, which is shorter than this has been. And I might even manage to get pictures up by the end of the week.
Love,
Amanda
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